Chief Investigations Officer

## Chief Investigations Officer Apply:
Penn State University Park:
Full time:
Posted Today:
REQ _#
** APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:*** ## CURRENT PENN STATE EMPLOYEE (faculty, staff, technical service, or student), please login to Workday to complete the internal application process. Please do not apply here, apply internally through Workday.* ## CURRENT PENN STATE STUDENT (not employed previously at the university) and seeking employment with Penn State, please login to Workday to complete the student application process. Please do not apply here, apply internally through Workday.
* ## If you are NOT a current employee or student, please click “Apply” and complete the application process for external applicants.
** Approval of remote and hybrid work is not guaranteed regardless of work location. For additional information on remote work at Penn State, see Notice to Out of State Applicants.
**** POSITION SPECIFICS
** Penn State is seeking an experienced investigations leader to serve as the inaugural
** Chief Investigations Officer (CIO)**, responsible for building and leading the new
** Office of Investigations** — a centralized, University-wide unit of approximately 8 full-time staff (plus part-time/flex investigative capacity) responsible for the intake, triage, and resolution of policy violation allegations and discrimination and harassment complaints (including cases arising under Title VI, VII, and IX), involving employee respondents. This is a new, senior leadership role central to the University's ability to resolve matters thoroughly, fairly, consistently, and efficiently, while serving as a trusted advisor to senior leadership.  

Reporting to General Counsel, the Chief Investigations Officer will lead the Office of Investigations as one of two newly restructured functions succeeding the current Office of Ethics and Compliance (OEC) and Office of Equal Opportunity and Access (OEOA). The Office of Investigations will absorb applicable casework previously handled separately by OEC, OEOA, Labor & Employee Relations, and the bias incident reporting team, consolidating it into a single intake and resolution pathway for employee-related matters.

The companion office, Office of Compliance and Civil Rights (OCCR), will retain and centralize subject-matter policy expertise — including Title VI, Title VII, Title IX, Employee Code of Conduct, Athletics Compliance, Youth Protection, ADA/disability accommodations for employees, and bias report management — and will serve as an embedded technical resource and consultation partner to the Office of Investigations throughout the lifecycle of a case.

** Responsibilities:
**** Program Design, Standardization & Process Oversight
*** Establish and continuously refine the full case-intake-to-resolution process including protocols for matters where no policy violation is found, consistent with system capabilities and best practices
* Develop and maintain a decision-tree rubric to guide consistent jurisdictional and pathway determinations across all incoming matters, informed by risk and community impact.  Potential pathways include outside counsel investigation, internal investigation, administrative case review, referral to HR, Unit Head or another office, provision of resources/information
* Standardize written work-product templates and complainant/respondent communications templates across all case types
* Oversee the hotline and case management system, including data reporting and trend/issue-spotting in partnership with OCCR subject-matter experts  
** Investigative Leadership
*** Lead, manage, and mentor a team of investigators operating under a two-investigator model for full Investigations and a one-investigator model for Administrative Case Reviews,…